Dread Spear vs. Giant Sword

[Zergs]

Update 7/10/2024 with added weapon tests:

https://ibb.co/KXGjK5g

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I've long wondered which of these two weapons is superior overall, so I put together a series of tests using Cosmic Forge and a character editor. I created four warrior characters with 3,200,000 xp (enough to put hybrids at level 15) supported by Rest All bishops and edited the starter crabs to have the defensive stats (AC and resistances) of a level 22 Rapax Warlock. I raised the crab HP and Stamina to be the rough equivalent of 10 Rapax Warlocks each (e.g. 2321 HP each). I edited the starter chest to drop a bunch of endgame loot.

I equipped a specific weapon on each of the 4 warriors (I started with 4 Mook Rangers) and then counted the number of rounds it took them to plow through the 3 crabs, as well as the number of times I needed to cast PL3 Rest All to keep the warriors swinging. Each warrior had one Ankh of Might (or Ring of the Road in the case of the Bard tests) and an Infinity Helm. Classes that couldn't use an Infinity Helm used the Robes of Rejuv instead. Each character has 80 in all weapon skills, 70 in close combat, and those that have 100 Strength have 22 Power Strike (numbers roughly based on HOK1970's reports for level 15 characters). All tests on Expert with PL 7 Enchanted Blade, but no other buffs.

I chose these numbers because my parties usually hit Rapax Castle around level 14 or 15, and my spells barely scratch these level 22 guys with Element Shield/Magic Screen I find there. That forces me to turn to melee, even with a magic party, so that is the period of the game in which I personally am most interested in melee performance. The results are below:

https://ibb.co/T0kdQSH

Obviously, there's a high degree of randomness in these tests, not just with swings and damage ranges (which should average out with 4 characters attacking for 10-15 rounds), but more with the random chances for status effects to proc. Still, I feel like I can draw some conclusions (and caveats) from this experiment:

1) This was a best case scenario for cursed weapons, short range weapons, and high-proc chance weapons. This is because cursed/short range weapons had 100% uptime against 3 very high HP enemies in melee range from round 1. The high proc weapons could land a disable early in the combat and then be able to pump 2000 more HP worth of damage into a stunned/paralyzed enemy. In a real battle, the proc weapons would have to continually attempt to reapply the disable to fresh enemies and the cursed weapons would often miss swings or entire rounds due to having no targets in range. Therefore, these tests overstate the power of procs/cursed weapons.

Or said another way, these numbers are directionally accurate for weapon performance against tough, high-HP bosses but not against groups of average enemies.

2) The Giant Sword and the Dread Spear came out very similarly in performance! The GS will overtake the Dread when it gets its second swing, but the Dread will also get to its 3rd quicker.

3) The Light Sword, Bloodlust, Ivory Blade, Muramasa, and Fang are all roughly comparable. The Light Sword is the best, with Bloodlust second, and the other three are pretty similar. But the Light Sword isn't as far ahead of the others as I thought it would be.

4) I've long felt that the Zatoichi Bo is the best overall weapon in the game. After these tests, I can comfortably keep it in the top 3.

5) The proc-based weapons are REALLY strong. The damage of the Zato, Staff of Doom, and Cane are not worse than the GS/Dread, but when they get lucky, they can really knock a big chunk out of enemies' HP very fast.

6) To my surprise, the type of proc (KO vs. Paralyze) matters a lot, at least against "Rapax Warlocks." I tested a ton of weapons with stun and the stuns pretty rarely procced. However, the 3 paralyze weapons procced very often. The best test case was the Zato, which has 15% paralyze and 15% KO, and procced a bunch of paralyzes but at most 1 stun. This is because Rapax Warlocks have 90 water resistance and 115 earth resistance. We know intuitively how good Blizzard and Iceball are in Rapax Castle, but I've never carefully watched how much more effective the water-based weapon procs are than other elements.

7) Implicitly, Mystic Arrows >>>>>>> Medusa Stones, at least when fighting the Rapax. Somehow this forum still underrates the Mystic Arrow and archery characters in general. 16-40 damage, with 35% Paralyze and 6% kill, and +6 to hit +3 initiative would be a great stat line if it was a melee weapon. Why are people still sleeping on this weapon combo?

8) Bloodlust's bonus swing doesn't show up in the character sheet. Characters with 2/2 were often getting a 3rd swing when attacking with Bloodlust.

9) Martial Arts did reasonably competitive damage, but it's almost as stamina hungry as a Giant Sword! This test possibly also underrates Martial Arts, since the skill is so easy to train. Maybe a level 15 Monk would have 80 staff skill normally, but would have 95 martial arts skill if using it from the beginning of the game. One nice thing about Martial Arts is that the animations are super fast.

10) I don't understand why the Mauler underperformed the Dread Spear despite superior damage stats. Both had 2/2 on my various test characters. None of these weapons had meaningful procs, and given the huge number of attacks made, the damage swings should average out. Note on The Mauler--its animations are super fast. A nice little benefit if you play Wizardry 8 as if it's an FPS game, like I do.

11) Having played a Faerie Ninja, I know how strong the Cane is. However, I assumed that it was still behind a Fighter or Rogue with a powerful endgame weapon. I now believe that a Cane FN is fully the match of a Rogue or Fighter if it has full uptime (say against a boss, like Al-Sedexus, Nessie, the DS, the Lava Lord, El Dorado, etc.) The FNs in my test didn't even have max Strength or Powerstrike yet.

12) Biogoo once said that a party is strong if it has 3 warriors, with a Fighter counting as 1.5 warriors, and a normal hybrid counting as 1. I'd count a Zato monk or samurai as 1.2 or 1.3. This weapon is noticeably better than a Dread Spear.

13) The Monk is the strongest offensive hybrid in the game. With the Zato, it's the 4th strongest physical attacker in the game behind a Fighter, Rogue, and Cane FN. With the Mindblast Rod, it's the strongest spell damage dealer of any character for about 2/3rds of the game.

14) The Bard is a better hybrid than a hybrid. It beats Ranger/Samurai easily in spell damage, and Bloodlust is the 2nd best sword. Bard is the best Bloodlust user, even over a Samurai, because its 10-15 extra points of Strength (Caliban's, Ring of the Road) scale really nicely with Bloodlust's bonus swing. This would change when the Samurai hits 3/3 (way before a Bard will).

15) I am not sure how Bloodlust's native Berserk interacts with Backstab. For a Rogue, Fang seemed to be a better weapon. This might be because the +10 strength gets multiplied by backstab, whereas the berserk merely stacks additively (and Fang has much higher base damage). Still, the results were pretty close. If I have a Bard and a Rogue, I'd give Bloodlust to the Bard and Fang to the Rogue.

16) Staff of Doom appears to be the overall best weapon for a Fighter :) Although I haven't tested Excaliber, Light Sword, or any dual-wield setup.

17) Since just about any character can get to 2/2 pretty easily, I'd expect a Str/Dex Staff of Doom Alchemist or Priest to keep up pretty easily with an average Dread Spear/Giant Sword/Mauler hybrid.

18) I think a lot of the 2/1 weapons are very close to getting their 2nd swing. Notably, the Dread Spear Monks had 2/3 (they had 63 speed base, so the other Dread Spear users were probably just short of their 3rd swing). Haste might also make some of these weapons look a lot better.

19) Although these tests make the Dread Spear look relatively unimpressive, I want to reiterate that this was a best case scenario for cursed weapons and proc weapons. Spear characters also get to train their weapons from the beginning of the game and get many chances to train due to the extended range (see HOK1970's recent fighter comparisons). The Dread Spear is also available pretty early, is lightweight, has +2 initiative and +20 polearm, and Valkyries are also great. I'm willing to bet that a Dread Spear Valkyrie will be the first character to hit 3/3 in a normal game, other than perhaps a Martial Arts monk.

20) Rogues kind of suck. Given how much more you get from a Fighter defensively, I'd expect a Rogue to significantly outperform a Fighter offensively. But it doesn't really do that.

21) Lightning Strike did have a noticeable effect in my tests. However, this was also a best-case scenario for LS--many rounds of Samurai repeatedly attacking a single target. It seemed to make a bigger difference for Bloodlust (Samurai vs. Ranger) than the Giant Sword (no difference). This could just be randomness.

22) Muramasa is not worth save-scumming.

23) Save-scumming extra SoDs might be worth it if you have a bunch of Fighters :) I have also gotten multiple Zatos on 2 of my last 3 parties that made it to AP.

23) I expect the Giant Sword to perform much better against earth-weak enemies (not sure what these are other than the robots).

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In hindsight, my Mindblast Monk+FN MDP was a really strong party. FN is a hybrid caster with fighter-level damage, the Mindblast Monk is just broken, and the Bard is in the next tier of physical attacker after the FN and the Zato users. The only really good nonfighter melee character that party was missing was the SoD Str/Dex Alchemist. Not sure what character I would have dropped for hit, or maybe I would have had the Gadgeteer use the SoD.

TL;DR - if you have a chance to use the Cane, the Zato, and the SoD together, do so. You won't regret it.

P.S. - I am happy to test other weapons at people's request. Missile weapons will be hard because of how I have my test saves set up.

[Horpner Sneed]

We theory-crafted that Fang will beat out Bloodlust once multiple attacks and swings are obtained. Fascinating that in practice that hasn't been true.

Muramasa is disappointingly less damage than Ivory Blade. The extra Kill% just isn't that great.

Did you find a big difference in the amount of Stamina pumping you had to do between Dread Spear and Giant Sword?

[Zergs]

@HS - It's possible that Fang might still be better at 3/3. It's also better than Bloodlust on a high-level Rogue.

Yes, the GS required 3x the stamina pumping of the Dread. You can see that in the "PL3 Rest Alls needed" column. In most of the GS trials, if the battle had gone on one more round I would have needed a 7th cast.

Obviously the rounds spent replenishing Stamina can be fewer with a higher PL Rest All or Power Cast.

@MPN - The issue isn't surviving against the offensive spells of the Rapax Warlocks. It's that level 15 casters can't do meaningful spell damage to level 22 enemies with additional magic defenses, even with Power Cast.

[Zolaerla]

Cool test! I was building a team that included a Zatoichi Bo Monk, so it'll be neat to see how that shapes up when I reach that point... though that is a defense-based team which is kinda nerfing them at Lv 11 (where they are ATM) when they don't do great on defense or offense.

I doubt there is a lot of a point to testing The Avenger vs *Light* *Sword* as the Light Sword is pretty much superior in every way, and both have Kill 10%. Excaliber is really slow in contrast, though maybe someone cares about the HP Regen?

Anyways, I'm kinda curious how MUCH WORSE some weapons are. For example, for Axes (yes, sucky, I know), the difference between Blades of Aesir vs Axe of Many Runes. Another weapon I'd like to see vs Zatoichi Bo or Staff of Doom is the lowly Stun Rod, since you can get tons of 'em so easily, it's slow but it paralyzes almost as nicely as the Staff of Doom. It will never be as good, but how close is it? Hmmm...

[vysionier]

This is an excellent testing method, Good thinking! You can likely get an extremely unbiased comparative result on testing dual wielders vs. single handed/two handed users.
Some good example tests might be: samurai dual vs single,
lord dual mace vs dual sword/mace(diamond eyes) vs. single weapon.
Although the build would be different for each of those, I’ve found that dual wielders benefit most from str, dex/spd in my games, vs a single weapon user benefiting most from a str/dex approach.

[Zergs]

@Vys - I'm happy to test dual-wielding too, but I need some kind of estimate on how high dual-wield skills and regular skills would be at level 15.

@Zolaerla - happy to run all of those. I've been meaning to test the Excal and maybe I'll do Avenger with it. Can do Stun Rod (good idea) and Blades of Aesir as well. Axe of Many Runes has huge penalties right?

[Horpner Sneed]

Staff of Doom has the Death Cloud spell (how is it we never talk about or use this?), while Excaliber and The Avenger both have powerful Lightning. The designers did a nice job of muddying the waters for those of us who want to theory-craft.

[vysionier]

Originally posted by Zergs:

@Vys - I'm happy to test dual-wielding too, but I need some kind of estimate on how high dual-wield skills and regular skills would be at level 15.

Sure thing! I’ll check my old saves when I get back home tonight.

[Zergs]

Originally posted by Horpner Sneed:

Staff of Doom has the Death Cloud spell (how is it we never talk about or use this?), while Excaliber and The Avenger both have powerful Lightning. The designers did a nice job of muddying the waters for those of us who want to theory-craft.

We do talk about it :)
https://steamcommunity.com/app/245450/discussions/0/3155329311501056491/?l=ukrainian

After this testing, in my opinion the Staff of Doom is hands-down the best weapon in the game:

- The strongest weapon for the strongest physical attacking class, the Fighter
- Solid damage, speed, accuracy, and weight
- 2nd best procs of any weapon in the game
- Guaranteed drop
- Can be used by any other character if you don't have a Fighter
- PL5 Death Cloud (L O L)

[Horpner Sneed]

Nice discussion and data. Thanks for the link.

[vysionier]

Ok: I looked at my old saves, and I only have very few examples at lvl 15. If you are ok with it, I will extrapolate a little by adding the stats as I would level them up, and add 5 skill to the weapon skill(if different weapon, then 3 each), 3 to close combat, 3 to dual wield. Furthermore, if less than 75 I will add skill points as appropriate.

So here’s a fun one I did:
faerie samurai (lvl14 bumped to 15 as explained) str55, int64, piety35, vit 50, dex 100, spd 100, sen45.
Weapon skills: dual wielded sword and sticks with a bo for extended range options. End game weapons planned: zatoichi Bo, fang or muramasa(if lucky), rod of sprites.
Close combat:79, dual weapons: 78, critical strike: 73, sword 75(before 25%) staff 73. I put 3 ‘use’ points into cc,dw,cs, sw, and staff. I put level up points into sword(1), staff(3) and the expert skills I didn’t mention.

Dwarf lord14, bumped to 15 for comparison. It was a very old save, I’ve since changed my style, but was decent nonetheless. Used sword and mace dual, with whip as an extended option. Plan was for ivory blade, diamond eyes, and vampire chain.
Str100, int35, piety58, vit60, dex100, spd 50, sen46
Skills: close combat 77, dual wield 84(before bonus), sword 78, mace 79, power strike 20. No levelup points added as all were above 75 after simulated skill gain. Power strike was the exception there.

I’d like to add the other 10 examples I have but I’m going to bed, g’night!

[Zergs]

That's good enough--I'll keep the same numbers I'm using (80 weapon, 70 cc) and just add 75 dual-wield.

The numbers are surprising to me though, as I assumed dual-wielding would result in lower cc/weapon skills than HOK's characters because dual-wield consumes training rolls from other skills. But maybe dual-wielding is so inefficient at killing enemies that battles take way longer and you get many more total training rolls.

[HOK1970]

Thanks for the insightful numbers, Zergs.

According to this, the TOP 3 weapons are all staffs: CoC, SoD, Zato.

1. Zato seems like the most powerful weapon in terms of stats, but since I rarely play a Monk or Samurai, I can't say much about the weapon in combat.

2. CoC does a lot of damage and has good status effects, but in my games this advantage was mostly meaningless. CoC doesn't have an Extended Range and Ranged Combat is also omitted because of CoC. The only advantage is in the fight against bosses. For me, unfortunately, a weapon that is good on paper, but in practice there are better weapons.

3. The SoD is probably really the best weapon in the game. In my experience, even a bad melee character (caster) or an RPC with poor weapon skill is good with this weapon. That's why I never give SoD to a Fighter, because they have other weapon options and I get an additional decent melee character with SoD.

4. I rarely used spells on a weapon (like Death Cloud in SoD) because I always forget to use it in combat.

5. Don't hold it against me, but for me, the Dread Spear remains my favorite weapon. Certainly not as spectacular as other weapons, this one serves its purpose to kill boss enemies AND monster mobs in relatively few combat rounds. My experience and results with this weapon are just too good, so I don't see any need for change in my games here.

6. Not all of the swings shown are always performed in combat. I would be interested to know if this is just a coincidence or if any values could have an influence here. Is it possible that the Chance to Hit has an impact on the maximum number of swings performed in combat? In any case, it seemed to me that characters with better accuracy were able to perform their maximum swings more often in combat. Unfortunately, this assumption is difficult to verify.

7. More swings are easier to get than multiple attacks. The biggest influence on the swing progression is the weapon initiative. Therefore, a character with Bloodlust becomes strong very quickly. + 1 swing from Bloodlust and an additional swing soon due to the high weapon initiative.
Speed also has an impact, especially when boosting with Haste.

8. At level 18, my two Dracon Fighters still don't get their 3rd attack in my current game, even with Haste. The biggest influence on several attacks seems to be the level of the character and the level modifier.

9. Melee weapons with extended range are more effective in combat than melee weapons without extended range. This has an even more serious effect in the course of the game, the more attacks and swings the characters get.
Often, a character without an Extended Ranged Weapon will forfeit the additional attacks and swings because there is no monster left in range. Characters with Melee Extended Range Weapons can usually take full advantage of their extra attacks and swings against monsters due to their increased range.
In my Light Sword Fighter vs Dread Spear Fighter comparison, my Dread Spear Fighter kills about 1 to 2 more monsters per combat due to her extended melee range.

10. Of course, the Mystic Arrows with their proc chance work particularly well against the water-susceptible Rapax. In Bayjin and the Sea Caves, you won't get a stab against the water creatures. Basically, earth magic has to struggle with less resistances than water even in the endgame, if I compare the resistances of the monsters on Flamestryke. Therefore, I would give K.O. (Earth) a slightly higher probability proc chance than Paralyze (Water) in terms of all maps.

11. Dual Wield has always turned out to be the worst type of attack in my games. I was convinced for a long time that it could be good, until I compared a Rogue with Dual Wield and without Dual Wield. Extra attacks and extra swings came much later in comparison and the penalty on To Hit was extremely noticeable. Actually, Dual Wield can only be good in a party that consists mainly of melee fighters, so that the many necessary skills can be trained sufficiently. Maybe it's good in boss fights, but in the game it hasn't convinced me so far, although I wish it was different.

12. The Rogue also gets the bad weapon modifier of Berserk -30 from Bloodlust even with a Backstab attack and maybe can therefore get better results with his Backstab with Fang without this penalty on Chance to Hit (See peddroelm's guide).

13. Muramasa has a high weapon initiative that will take the Samurai to the 2nd and 3rd swings faster unless he gets Bloodlust, Ivory Blade, or Light Sword as a sword.

14. Compared to the Dread Spear, Giant Sword performed significantly worse, although the Giant Sword does more damage. However, the higher damage is compensated by the fact that the Dread Spear usually has one more swing. In addition, the stamina of the Giant Sword Fighter falls very quickly and requires a remnant Rest All. A caster in the party loses an action that he/she could otherwise use for something else.

[Horpner Sneed]

I wonder if the mysterious penalty on Mauler--perhaps on maces in general--will keep a Lord with dual maces from rising higher. That seems to me the only dual wield build with a small chance to be competitive.

[Zergs]

@HOK

5- I think the Dread is a great weapon too. These results are from a very controlled test--very different from actual use in a game where monsters are running around, etc.

8- From the formulas we know Dexterity has a big impact on # of attacks too. Have you tried Superman to bring your Dracons up to 125 Dex? And very strangely, somehow the Monks in my example had 2/3 swings with the Dread Spear. No idea how. Don't think 13 points of Speed is enough when you Hasted Fighters can't get there.

9- I agree

10- I believe this too. Normally, my stun weapons do indeed proc often throughout the game. But the difference against water-weak Rapax was staggering.

14- For me, it isn't just the damage of the Giant Sword, it's the 30% KO. As you point out in #10, I think the Giant Sword will perform better against other enemies.

@HS - I feel like I want to do more testing on the Mauler and the 2/3 of the Monks' Dread Spear. Something feels off here.

[mpnorman10]

Originally posted by Horpner Sneed:

I wonder if the mysterious penalty on Mauler--perhaps on maces in general--will keep a Lord with dual maces from rising higher. That seems to me the only dual wield build with a small chance to be competitive.

Originally posted by Zergs:

@HS - I feel like I want to do more testing on the Mauler and the 2/3 of the Monks' Dread Spear. Something feels off here.

Equipping a Priest with a Mace and Shield is something I have done a lot, usually with a Mauler as the mace. On paper this is the superior choice, 2% kill, 15% KO, +15 to Mace and Flail skill and 12-27 base damage (before the Strength bonus), but Diamond Eyes, 20% Paralyze and 7-22 base damage, or 14.5 vs. 19.5 average base damage, is better in at least some ways. Also, when in battle after casting Haste Diamond Eyes has maximums of 2 attacks and 3 swings while the Mauler remains at 2/2. This is clearly due to the difference in Weapon Initiative of 4 (-1 for the Mauler vs. +3 for Diamond Eyes).

The Mauler's +15 to Mace and Flail skill helps accuracy, but Diamond Eyes has a direct +2 "To Hit" advantage on the weapon versus zero for the Mauler. The swing advantage, if they get the maximum and if they hit and penetrate has about a 50% to attempt to proc with Diamond Eyes versus a 30% attempt to proc in some way with the Mauler. There is the difference that any proc for Diamond Eyes is from Paralyze while any proc from the Mauler is predominantly from KO (+2% instant kill).

In any case they are close in performance but within the last few years I have been experimenting with (and tentatively prefer) using Diamond Eyes for the mace/shield Priest versus the Mauler.

Other points about the Priest (just for context): This is in an MDP of the type exampled in the guide. The Priest has both open Power Cast (eventually in the 80 range) and Power Strike (eventually in the 50 range). Strength is 100 (maxed but no item help). Priest makes no attempt to be fast (until Haste is cast in battle). The Psionic in the same party takes care of the fast Soul Shield casting. Build is STR/INT until one is maxed and DEX (in the high 50s until then) pushed every level after that... never reaches 100.

So I also am very interested if there is anything we are missing about the Mauler since Diamond Eyes (as a main hand weapon, with a shield), with less base damage, seems to perform about as well.